“Grand!” Dad clapped his hands as he turned to his entire crew and called everyone to attention. “Now, we’re all here, all accounted for?”
The seasonal crew called that they were. Then the main crew. We ran through the current itinerary, the food preparation, the entertainment, the guest list, and any troubleshooting we would need over the next two weeks. Apparently the communications console on the lander,Starstall—a modified RY-280 Commuter with a larger passenger capacity for excursions—was still not fixed, so we’d make a brief stop to refuel on Tatooine and drop it off with one of Dad’s favored mechanics before heading to Geonosis. We didn’tnormallygo to Tatooine, but we had added it to the itinerary to drop offStarstall, which caused a little bit of a murmur among the seasonal crew. It couldn’t be helped. We neededStarstallfixed, and Dad refused to postpone a tour when he could just take a detour.
“As always, like our motto states,” Dad added, pointing to the inscription carved above the entryway, “ ‘As long as stories persist…’ ”
“ ‘So do we who champion them,’ ” we finished, and he smiled proudly.
“Absolutely, friends. Now let’s make this a tour to remember!” He clapped his hands in dismissal, and we broke apart to our stations. As one of the main crew—technically Dad’s first mate, after Telly, but I did whatever needed to be done on the ship most of the time—I was part of the welcoming party, so I headed toward the docking bay on the bottom deck.
Dad opened theStarfarer’s ramp, and it unfolded to the ground, spilling the dusky light of Coruscant into the storied hull of the ship. There were, in fact, at least half a dozen passengers waiting to board, and the moment the ramp touched the ground they started inside, bright-eyed with adventure.
And just like that, theStarfarer’s 643rd tour began.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Guests
The first guests were, unsurprisingly, a four-person group of Galactic Civil War buffs who—the second they stepped onto the ship—commented on how theStarfarer, for being a C90 Corellian Corvette from the war, did not look authentic enough. As a military vessel, it lookedtoocomfortable. And wasn’t having an RY-280 Commuter just impossibly civilian? An RM-09 shuttle would’ve been much more economical. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes.
After the Buffs—that was what I decided to call them, because I didn’t want to expend energy to remember their names—checked in with Daaric on his datapad, they came to me for their room assignments and itinerary. Maeve and the captain were farther down the corridor, well out of earshot, ready to welcome them into the ship with a fresh drink and a chat before they boarded the midship lift.
“No Dantooine? WhyGhorman?” one of them complained, scanning the itinerary I had transmitted onto their datapads with a tap from my own. “No one cares aboutsilks.”
I gave them a tight smile. “As per the notification we sent out a week ago, the captain has decided to forgo Dantooine this tour due to unsafe activity.”
“Unsafe?You’re kidding,” another added.
The four of them huddled around me, as if they could bully me into changing it. They were all humans, and by the looks of their clothes, they came from somewhere in the Core. Most war buffs did. Crisp shirts, pressed trousers, and clean-shaven faces. All in their mid-thirties. Clearly used to getting their way with their family names or, alternatively, enough credits.
Usually, I would feel a little unease around them, but after surviving a firefight, these guys seemed…
Well, I wasn’t very intimidated by them.
“Is it smugglers?” the one with round spectacles asked.
His friend added, “Syndicate?”
“Pirates?” guessed another—a man with a goatee.
“Pirates?”echoed a soft, honeyed voice from the mouth of the open ramp. “If it were pirates, I’m sure Hansifred wouldn’t mind.”
The Buffs turned to look at the tiny alien womanstanding in the entryway, her goggles making her eyes look wide and bright, as if nothing could get past her. She was dressed in unassuming dark trousers and a coarse-spun blue shirt and vest, her skin the color of warm clay.
Daaric shifted nervously, scratching at the side of his neck. Not like she was dangerous but like…heknewher and had maybe lost a bet.
That seemed very possible, knowing Daaric.
“Then why can’t we go?” the guy in the spectacles asked, and his friends all agreed.
“There are far worse things than pirates,” the alien woman replied. Her hands were patiently folded behind her back as she observed them with her magnified eyes. “I’m sure you know whom I mean.”
One of the men—Spectacles—sneered. “You can’t be talking about thoseFirst Orderrumors, can you?” Then he turned to me. “I thought this was areputabletour. I didn’t think Hansifred Quay bought into rumors.”
Rumors? Sure, I was shot at today byrumors.But I couldn’t exactly say that in front of the crew, so I reined in my annoyance and said instead, “We don’t want to take undue risks.”
“Sure,” scoffed the last man in the group. Tall and gangly, he spoke with bravado, like he was the leader.
Ugh, this tour was going to beinsufferable.
